The EPA has granted our petition to add Dioxin to TRI list! This will be
in the Federal Register this week. Here is a draft release to send out to
target your local Dioxin emitters--refineries, incinerators!

Industry Must Report Deadly Dioxin Under Community Right To Know Law
EPA proposal grants petition by Oil Refinery Network

Industries across the country will be required to report releases
of the most toxic pollutant ever invented for the first time under federal
right-to-know laws, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed today as
it granted a dioxin petition filed by Communities for a Better Environment
(CBE) of California on behalf of oil refinery communities. CBE coordinates
the National Oil Refinery Action Network (NORAN) which unites communities,
workers, shareholdersThe action comes only a week before a first-ever
series of public meetings to bring world-class independent scientists
together with government, community members and health care workers around
a response to the dioxin threat in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Every day another industrial neighbor, mother, fisherman, doctor,
and nurse asks why dioxin is already in us at dangerous levels, and when
solutions to stop exposing us to this deadly by-product will be put in
place." said Denny Larson of CBE. "EPA took a big step toward telling us
where dioxin comes from - now let's talk about making it stop."

Dioxin is the common name for a group of twenty-eight chemicals
that are either banned or are unwanted by-products of recent manufacturing
methods using chlorine. It is "one of the most, if not the most, potent
reproductive/developmental toxicant known" according to EPA's response to
CBE's petition. Cancer, birth defects, reproductive effects including
endometriosis, slow learning, immunological effects and other serious
health problems have been linked to dioxin exposure. A 1994 EPA draft
health assessment concluded that dioxin levels already present in the
average American's body are at or near levels which may cause some of these
effects.

In San Francisco Bay, health warnings are in effect for dioxin
contamination of fish that many low income families rely upon for food,
harbor seals have extremely high levels of PCBs (a class of chemicals which
includes some dioxin like compounds) in their blood, and monitoring shows
that significant amounts of dioxin still enter the Bay from many sources.
Twenty-seven sources of ongoing dioxin emissions have been identified in
the Bay Area.

EPA's proposal to grant CBE's petition will be published in the
Federal Register in about one week, and was received by CBE yesterday. In
it the agency proposes to add all twenty-eight chemicals with dioxin like
toxicity to the list of toxics for which industries must report releases
to air, water and land in the Toxic Chemical Release Inventory required by
the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act. However, EPA
postponed action to revise a loophole exempting facilities which release
less than 10,000 pounds of dioxin per year. EPA said in 1994 that all
sources released only 7 to 57 pounds, and now seeks comment on this issue.

EPA's action responded to a petition by CBE requesting that it
require petroleum refineries nationwide to report how much dioxin they
release. The petition was filed on behalf of people who live near
refineries in many parts of the country, after CBE and the National Oil
Refinery Action Network presented new findings that refineries are a dioxin
source during the Citizens Conference on Dioxin in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
in March, 1996. At that time, 350 Network members, refinery neighbors and
others from around the country sent a letter to President Clinton seeking
refinery dioxin testing. The petition was filed by CBE in August, 1996
following discussions with EPA officials. EPA was required by law to
respond within 180 days.

Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) is a not-for-profit
multiracial environmental group with 7,500 California members. CBE helps
people who are threatened by industrial pollution in our urban communities
to gain more power for improving our health and environment, using science,
law and community organizing. The National Oil Refinery Action Network
(NORAN) is a project of CBE that unites communities, workers, responsible
shareholders, and others working to make oil industry cleaner and safer.